foto fusion - too cool for albums

It is always an interesting judge of character when someone tells you about a product they believe is light years beyond what you happen to be using. Sometimes they get argumentative and sometimes they act superior and smug. A few months ago while sitting in the David Ziser Master Class (I think they kick off another one this week) David threw a question out to the class - "Who in the class is producing albums for their clients?" About half the class raised their hands. Then he asked, "What are you using to build them?" Several people offered up some suggestions and why they were their favorite. I added InDesign to the mix because that's how I roll. After the class had spent about 10 minutes talking about the software they use - feeling so proud and happy in our decisions, David unloaded LumaPix on the class. HOLY COW! I will be doing a video demo in the next two weeks because a typed review isn't sufficient. I instantly fell in love with the program while at the class. However, I just sat down last night to put together an album with the program and was totaly blown away.

Initally there is a learning curve - but unlike Adobe products the learning curve is ... "oh it's that simple ... I was trying to make it more complicated." The frist 10-15 minutes I sat in front of the program I was thrashing like crazy and geting nowhere. Where's this pannel and how do you adjust this color - there's no swatches pallet?!?!?!? Moving from InDesign to LumaPix is like telling a Stock Car drive he can go just as fast while sitting on a moped. I had to force myself to stop and sorta fall into the interface. The program is very discoverable - but if you are not careful you can miss the HUGE functionality in the simplicity.

See the little box in the top right corner? Yeah, that's the ENTIRE TOOL SET! If you want to effect the photo - click on the center area of the square and it brings up that adjustment tool. If you want to effect the border click on the border. If you want to effect the shadow ... you guessed it - click on the shadow.

One of the bigest time-savers in the program is the ability to split frames! I don't know how many hours I have spent in InDesign trying to make even frames with even pixel spacing. You simply draw a new picture frame to the size you want - then tell LumaPix how many pictures you want that frame to be split into - and BOOM! It is all done. Drop your photos in and you are good. Click on the banner at the top of this post to link to their website and check out some of their material. I will be producing a video review/tutorial for next week so you guys can see how I am using the program. If you make wedding albums - this program will be your saving grace. Oh, I should mention - it is a Windows only program. If you want to run it on a Mac Parallels, VM Ware or BootCamp are your only options - but I have seen it run on David's MacBook Pro in Parallels and it ran fine so you should be good to go there.